Like Frost It Burns
by the artful scribbler
Summary: Every night he comes to her boudoir, every night she dances at his Masque, every night he gives her a gift...and every night he takes his revenge. Evil little Labyrinth one-shot. Dark!Jareth, Amnesiac!Sarah. Warning: dark themes including non-con. Mature readers only please!


_**A/N** Now for a brief deviation away from Lumione. (What is it with these blond badboy Brits, I can't resist them). This is my first venture into Labyrinth fanfic territory, but rest assured I've been a fully-signed-up, die-hard fangirl since first seeing the movie at the tender age of five. __I couldn't resist giving it a whirl when attacked by a sharp-fanged little plot bunny (starring_ _Dark!Jareth and Amnesiac!Sarah)_ _which manifested into this_ _short, somewhat **evil little one-shot.**_

 _ **WARNING** : This fic contains some disturbing and potentially triggering themes including **mind-control and non-con** (not too graphic, but please don't read if this is upsetting to you). I didn't intend for it to go quite as dark as it did, but...well, it did. So please heed the warnings! __To borrow from Jareth, "Turn back before it's too late..."_

 _For those who read on, I would love to hear your thoughts :)  
_ _xox artful_

* * *

 **Like Frost It Burns**

...

 _"I have been generous up until now._

 _But I can be cruel."_

...

She sits before the silvery surface of her bevelled looking glass, gazing at her reflection.

She is lovely, and vaguely pleased with her loveliness. How luminous her skin, satin-smooth and lightly flushed as an unfurling rose. How entrancing the curve of her coral lips, parted enticingly as if waiting to receive a lover's kiss...

Her fingers toy absently with a glossy, raven ringlet, tumbled with exquisite artistry over her collarbone and down to where the swell of her flesh meets the seam of her shimmering bodice. She is matchlessly fine, fairly dripping with jewels, enveloped by yards of rustling silk and billowing chiffon.

Perhaps her greatest beauty are her eyes, limpid jade pools strikingly fringed with jetty lashes...and yet it is her eyes that her gaze avoids encountering, staring through, flitting over, but never truly connecting with—for when she does, there is a strange hammering in her head, like someone beating on a windowpane, crying to be let out.

Behind her, the mirror reveals a boudoir cluttered with rare and precious things. The shelves are heaped with eye-pleasing trinkets: exquisitely fragile figurines, crystal vases and costly miscellanea. A silver lamp-stand, fashioned like a sapling tree, nods under a burthen of fruit made from heavy clusters of rubies, sapphires and emeralds. Perched upon her windowsill is a mechanical nightingale, made from fine-wrought gold, which sporadically trills a flute-like melody and flaps its filigree wings.

Each item is a tribute from _his_ elegantly tapered fingers, dreamed into existence in the shape of a crystal ball and presented at the close of each nightly Masquerade.

She wonders what his next gift will be. He seems to know better than she whatever it is her heart desires...but she has an odd notion that if he actually asked her, she would reply with, "A book." But he never asks.

A sound outside the door alerts her to his approach: the diamond soles of his shoes click-clicking hollowly on the marble flagstones of the hallway.

As always, a shiver passes over her. It is not that she is afraid of him. Or perhaps it is. Whatever the cause, there is an icy prickle which begins in her heart and spools along her veins, even as her heartbeat quickens and the flush on her cheeks deepens.

She turns her head to watch the silver door-knob twist and the white panelled doors swing silently open.

He emerges in the threshold, framed momentarily like an unworldly picture; tall, resplendently clad, and misleadingly slender—she knows too well the sinewy strength of his arms, the muscular breadth of his shoulders beneath those rich layers of velvet and satin.

"Good evening, milady." His voice is courteous, caressing, and subtly mocking.

With languid grace he moves towards her, surveying her splendour in the mirror's reflection, approval manifest in his eyes. _Those_ eyes...one ice-blue, the other onyx-black, both agleam with something she cannot quite define, but lies somewhere in between desire and covetousness. There is something sly and exultant in the curve of his lips, but the nearer he comes, the harder it is to see anything past his dazzling, cruel beauty.

He bends over her and his lips brush her ear. "Come now, my Queen. We mustn't be late."

 _My Queen._

The honorific is seductively grand and consequential, and her back straightens in response. _I am a Queen,_ she thinks. _Yes...yes, I must be. There is my diadem._

She reaches for the glittering crescent, couched upon a satin cushion, and nestles it upon the crown of her dark hair.

Behind her, his smile widens, and once again she is indistinctly aware of something unpleasant beneath the surface suavity. A tangle of thorns beneath a bed of roses. With an impossibly elegant movement he steps to her side and executes a half-bow, gallantly extending his gloved hand for her to take.

…

They dance until dawn.

The music twines about her body, enchanting her feet, so she barely notices the hours sweeping past like one of the waltzing throng surrounding them. A great, gilded clock looms over the glittering ballroom, but her partner whirls and spins her so quickly that she can never quite read its ivory face. And every time it strikes the hour, he leans down to catch her lips with his, distracting her from its heralding chime.

He tastes beguilingly organic, like nectar, damp earth and midwinter. Sweet, rich and bitter.

A sea of obscenely grotesque masques enclose and envelope her, and though she is aware she has seen them before—perhaps a hundred, perhaps a thousand times before, she cannot rightly recall—she is yet unnerved by the glittering, leering eyes which peer out from behind them. She has the disturbing notion that they long to rip her limb from limb and dance upon her pooling blood.

But while he holds her possessively against his body she is safe from their malice, and so she clings the tighter to him and watches his lips curl triumphantly.

By the end of the night her satin slippers are tattered and threadbare.

...

He escorts her back to her chamber and proffers his gift. As soon as her fingers close about the shining orb it transforms into a beautiful ivory hand-mirror, ornately carved and inlaid with priceless pearls. Moving beneath its reflective plane is a miniature image of them dancing together.

"Does it please you, my Queen?" he asks her, his voice taut with barely contained impatience.

"Yes," she responds, transfixed by the gorgeous item. She strokes the glossy handle and runs the pads of her fingers over the enchanted glass wonderingly.

"It's yours," he says, "but you must give me a gift in return."

She looks up at him, a feeling of mild consternation causing her brow to furrow. "But I cannot give you anything," she hears herself saying. The words spill automatically from her mouth, like lines from a play. She's sure she has spoken them countless times before. "Because I have nothing to give."

He trails one finger along the curve of her shoulder. She gasps. His hand is ungloved, and his touch is as cold as frost. Like frost, it burns. "Then I must take it from you," he murmurs, leading her over to her bed.

…

The torturous, inescapable pleasure-pain of him inside her is as excruciating as it is exquisite. His ice-blooded body sears and burns as he sinks himself within her mortal warmth, his mouth greedily slaking his thirst for ascendancy with her distressed cries and euphoric moans.

She arches and writhes, by turns pleading with and begging for him: to stop, to keep going, to have mercy, to give her more. When it becomes too much to bear, the ecstasy teetering to close to a precipice of agony, she tries in vain to wrest herself away, but she's incapacitated by more than just the inflexible grip of his fingers encircling her wrists, or the relentless buck and thrust of his long, lean body.

She is trapped and bound in his thrall, his shimmering net of power, but she only ever realizes it when she's least able to resist.

"Yesss," he hisses in her ear, with each deep, rhythmic plunge, "yes—mine...all and only mine—yes, yes...Sarah..."

For a moment the name registers oddly to her ears, like something murmured in a foreign tongue—and then something clicks, she gulps in a great shuddering breath, and she _knows_ , knows everything, sees it all as plainly as if a light has been switched on in her mind— _I'm not a Queen, I'm Sarah! I'm Sarah Williams!_

And she screams aloud, in rage more than fear, thrashing and biting and clawing and kicking...but he only laughs, and thrusts harder, and she remembers that this is both her punishment and his revenge; that by rejecting his love and spurning his dominion she has incurred the terrible penalty of his everlasting enmity and enduring spite...

As the hope drains out of her, so does the fight, and she stops struggling with a defeated sob.

Her despair propels him to immediate climax; with a loud groan his body jerks and shudders with release. As he spills himself inside her, she is overtaken by an irresistible wave of ecstasy, throbbing through her clenching core and coiling out over her entire body, until she is crying out her own cresting bliss...and the foggy filter descends; she forgets who she is and why she's here, and there is only _him_ , and his strange, mismatched eyes, glittering victoriously down at her.

...

The next evening she sits once more before her glass, gazing at her reflection, vaguely pleased by her loveliness.

...

 _Finis._


End file.
